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- Be a Bamboo Tree
I know firsthand the feeling.
The tightness in the chest.
The sense that the walls are closing in.
Being locked in place, unable to move, while knowing, deep down, that something has to change.
I’ve felt it in my body.
And I’ve felt it in my business.
This all came to a head about two and a half years ago.
And when you’re someone who likes to perform at a high level—who likes to move fast, make progress, build—there’s no magic switch that flips you back into feeling strong, clear, and capable of taking on the world.
Instead, you have to sit in the mud.
You have to unwind.
Slow down.
And honestly look at how you got there in the first place.
For me, in business, it was death by a thousand decisions:
We stuffed in too many services.
We hired ahead of revenue.
We operated without real profitability mapping.
We tried to solve operational chaos with more sales—and more hustle.
We sold a vision before it was fully ready to stand on its own.
Hard to see when you’re in the middle of the build.
Painfully obvious in hindsight.
(PS—Reignition is a fantastic book on this.)
With my health, it followed the same pattern:
Three years of strength training with little mobility or stretching.
Ignoring warning signs.
Pushing through pain because I didn’t yet understand what it was trying to tell me.
Until eventually, I had to stop everything.
Ironically—or maybe inevitably—both breakdowns happened at the same time.
Looking back, I’ve started calling that period “the oak tree chapter.”
Strong.
Rigid.
Impressive from the outside.
But unable to bend.
And in the stillness that followed—in the sitting, the reflecting—it became clear to me:
That’s not the lifeform for the future.
So what is?
For me, it’s bamboo.
Flexible.
Nimble.
Able to move freely with the wind instead of resisting it.
In both my body and business, the work has now become about building structures that support adaptability—not rigidity. Systems that allow growth without brittleness. Strength without stagnation.
A friend of mine, Dan Lubeck, who thinks deeply about life through the lens of gardening, said something to me recently:
“Bamboo is scalable.”
He’s right.
Bamboo grows in clusters.
Stacked together.
Collectively powerful.
Oak trees stand alone.
Thick.
Immovable.
And vulnerable when the storm is strong enough.
I think, if we’re honest, what we really want is a life where the wind can blow, and we can move with it.
Not stay frozen and absorb the damage silently.
Not wake up afterward trying to understand the wreckage.
Have a great day in the spirit of bending and growing freely.
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